Russia trying to attack beyond Avdiivka – Kyiv

NOV O OLE K SAND RIVKA,Uk raine: Russian troops launched multiple attacks to the west of the recently captured city of Avdiivka in a bid to force more gains on the battlefield, a Ukrainian army spokesman said on Sunday.

Kyiv also announced it had opened a war crimes investigation after two separate reports of Russian troops shooting captured Ukrainian soldiers emerged.

Facing manpower and ammunition shortages, Ukraine was forced to withdraw from the industrial hub in the eastern Donetsk region, handing Moscow its first major territorial gain since May 2023.

“The enemy is trying to actively develop its offensive,” Dmytro Lykhoviy, a spokesman for the Ukrainian army commander leading Kyiv’s troops in the area, said on state television on Sunday.

Ukraine’s general staff reported 14 failed Russian attacks on the village of Lastochkyne, about 2 kilometers (1 mile) to the west of Avdiivka’s northern edge.

“But our considerable forces are entrenched there,” Lykhoviy said.

He also reported failed Russian attacks near the villages of Robotyne and Verbove in the southeastern Zaporizhzhia region — one of the few places where Ukraine managed to regain ground during last year’s counteroffensive.

He said it would be “very difficult” for Russia to break through there, given heavy Ukrainian defensive lines and natural conditions of the terrain.

“The situation in the Zaporizhzhia sector is stable ... No positions have been lost,” he said, adding that the “enemy was kicked in the teeth and retreated.”

Lykhoviy’s remarks came a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin hailed the capture of Avdiivka as an “important victory” for his troops, just days ahead of the second anniversary of the invasion.

The battle for Avdiivka was one of the bloodiest of the two-year war, drawing comparisons with Russia’s assault on the city of Bakhmut, which it captured last May at the cost of tens of thousands of soldiers.

Avdiivka had symbolic importance to both Kyiv and Moscow — seen as a marker of Ukrainian resistance after it briefly fell to Russian-backed separatists in 2014.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the decision to withdraw was taken to save as many lives as possible among his troops.

Fears heightened

Russia’s capture of the town has raised fears that its forces could now try to advance further into the Donetsk, which it claims to have annexed.

In the village of Novoo le k sand rivka, some 30 km west, local resident Vadym told Agence France-Presse (AFP) that, for now, he was staying put with his wife and week-old child.

The 22-year-old said shelling by the advancing Russian forces was “constant.”

About 200 people remain in the village, but the attacks have not yet pushed him to leave with his family.

“I hope it will stop. And if it doesn’t stop, we will try to leave,” Vadym said.

Oleksandr Syrskyi, Kyiv’s newly installed commander in chief, vowed on Sunday that his forces would “eventually return to our Ukrainian Avdiivka.”

Concerns are growing in Kyiv and the West over Ukraine’s ability to thwart a renewed Russian offensive without unlocking a stalled $60-billion United States aid package.

Also on Sunday, Ukraine’s prosecutor general said it had opened an investigation after the army posted footage of what it claimed was a Russian soldier shooting two Ukrainian soldiers at pointblank range.

The prosecutor’s office said it was investigating possible war crimes based on the footage, adding that the incident happened near the village of Vesele in Donetsk.

AFP could not verify the authenticity of the video, its location or when it was shot.

Prosecutors also announced a separate investigation into reports of the alleged execution of six wounded Ukrainian soldiers left behind during Kyiv’s withdrawal from Avdiivka.

There was no response from Russia to the allegations.

The army has already said some Ukrainian soldiers were captured during the hasty retreat.